The 2008 Annual Michigan Library Association Conference was held in Kalamazoo this year on October 22-24.

Shaping your community’s yesterdays for today and tomorrow: building your library’s local history collection – This presentation highlighted many useful tips about establishing or promoting a library’s local history collection. Kris Rzepczynski, Michigan/Genealogy Coordinator at the Library of Michigan, presented the viewpoint from a large library with an established collection. Sara Wedell, Adult Services Librarian at the Delta Township District Library, presented the viewpoint of a library just starting out with their local history collection in a new building. Things to consider when creating a local history collection are the scope, what neighboring libraries are doing so as not to duplicate services, whether to circulate materials, and access vs. preservation. Establishing contacts, such as libraries, historical/genealogical societies, newspapers or churches, within your community is also important. Resources available to local history librarians include the MeL Genealogy Gateway (which includes HeritageQuest), Michigan County Histories and, soon, SeekingMichigan.org, an online collection of historical collections.

Tech Tools for Reference: a Public and Academic Library Perspective – This was a very informative presentation about all kinds of useful online tools. Holly Hibner, head of Adult Services at Salem-South Lyon District Library presented some tools from the public library perspective and Christine Tobias, Reference and Technology librarian at Michigan State University showed the audience tools that could be useful in an academic library setting. A link to their presentation is available here.

Get the Point Across with a Wink – Glenn Fischer from the Genesee District Library presented about a software tool called WINK which is a free way to record computer screen activity, annotate the recording with text or voice, and export the recording in a number of formats. At DALNET, we have already begun experimenting with this tool for training purposes.

VUFind: an Open Source ILS Independent OPAC – Presentations about VUFind were made by representatives of both Western Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University. WMU’s presentation can be found here, while the presentation by Jackie Wrosch, Systems Librarian at EMU, can be found here. VUFind does not replace your ILS, but it can be an improvement on the OPAC supplied by your vendor. Jackie discussed the improvements that were possible with VUFind, such as the ability to customize, better keyword searching, and integration of outside content, and also the areas that did not quite reach expectations, such as holds/requests, online renewals, and tagging. Plans for the future include improving the functions they need, comparing VUFind with their vendor OPAC and developing in-house support.

On Monday, November 10, the Michigan Municipal League in partnership with the Department of History, Arts, and Libraries (HAL) held one of their training seminars at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. The presentation was titled “Arts and Culture as an Economic Development Strategy.” The overall theme asserted that arts and culture are key components needed to attract and retain people and businesses in Michigan communities which will help aid Michigan’s economic resurgence.

The keynote speaker was Robert McNulty, the founder and president of Partners for Livable Communities. He is a recognized expert in urban planning and community development by bringing together public and private partnerships to help revitalize cities.

McNulty used Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Chattanooga, Tennessee as examples of what happens to a community when money is invested in cultural activities. Both cities were turned around positively through the investment of capital, leadership, innovation, and hard work. He noted that culture and the arts are assets to help achieve the goals of a livable community, and libraries can assist because of their unique ability to change according to community needs.

McNulty stressed the need to use arts and culture to welcome people into the community and added that multiculturalism needs to be celebrated in arts and cultural programs. All programming should be inviting and not excluding. Most importantly, for all of these ideas to work leaders need a “non-politicized” agenda.

One of the afternoon sessions was highlighted by Maud Lyon, Executive Director of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan. This organization has a membership roster of 75 organizations throughout a seven county region. The Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan helps to ensure that arts and cultural institutions are included in community decisions and help serve community needs; the Alliance helps draw people into communities as residents rather than as tourists.

In total there were six speakers, and all were excellent. The importance of arts and culture will be vital in building and retaining strong communities in Southeastern Michigan. Many of the speakers asserted that libraries could be a great resource to help attract arts and culture into communities. It was also noted that libraries are beloved yet underfunded. Partnerships will be of great importance to ensure Michigan’s economic recovery.

This free seminar will be repeated on Friday, December 12, 2008 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Schedule (All times are U.S. Pacific Time, also known as Second Life Time):
8:00 A.M. – Welcome and Keynote
Tom Peters, author, ALA TechSource Library Technology Report on Librarianship in Virtual Worlds

Location
ALA Island in Second Life. There are several ways to get to ALA Island. The SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/ALA%20Island/128/102/29/. Or you could search: under the Edit dropdown menu in the SL interface, then click on the Places tab, then search for “American Library Association” then select the teleport option.